Freeing Gilad: An Ethical Conundrum

The story of Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier freed after being held by
Hamas for more than five years, is a profoundly moving one. His nighttime abduction
in a cross-border raid, his years in captivity, his family's tireless campaign
on his behalf, and his euphoric homecoming all pull at our heart strings.

During
his long imprisonment, Gilad's innocent, boyish face—he is just Gilad to
all of us now—became an iconic image in Israel and around the world. It adorned
thousands of posters and signs around Israel and appeared on countless websites.
His dark eyes seemed to look at us in a silent plea for help. Who could not be
moved by his terrible ordeal and that of his family? We could not begin to imagine
their suffering; we could only hope that it would end happily. Now that it has,
we can all take comfort in Gilad's freedom, and be thankful that he is alive and
hopeful that he and his family can recover from the trauma they have lived through
these past five years. The relief which so many of us feel at the happy ending
of this saga, however, must be tempered by an acknowledgement that the deal Israel
made with Hamas to secure Gilad's release is, at best, morally problematic, if
not actually unethical.

Ethics is, of course, not likely to have been uppermost in the minds of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet members when they overwhelmingly
voted to approve the deal with Hamas, which had finally been struck after years
of on-and-off indirect negotiations through third parties. For them, the emotional
plight of Gilad Shalit and his family, the Israeli public's ardent desire for
his safe return home, and the state of Israel's longstanding commitment to do
whatever it takes to recover its soldiers—dead or alive—from behind
enemy lines were no doubt the motivating factors behind their decision to free
more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds serving life sentences
for murder and other acts of terrorism, in exchange for Gilad's freedom.

In addition to the emotional and political motivations, there were also perhaps
strategic considerations at work for the Israeli government: namely a desire to
shift international attention from the recent Palestinian bid for statehood and
weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who had been enjoying a
surge of popularity among Palestinians as a result of his defiance of U.S. and
Israeli wishes by submitting an application to the United Nations' Security Council
for Palestinian membership in the UN. In striking a deal with Hamas and bringing
Gilad home, Netanyahu has not only demonstrated strong leadership—a quality
many of his domestic critics have long accused him of lacking—and boosted
his domestic support, he has also dealt a political blow to Abbas and allowed
Egypt's military rulers to claim credit for their role in brokering the deal,
thereby possibly improving the very fragile relationship between Israel and post-Mubarak
Egypt.

But while Netanyahu may have scored a political coup, Israel's decision to release
convicted terrorists from prison raises some very thorny ethical issues. To be
sure, the ethical implications of the deal between Israel and Hamas are by no
means clear-cut. The underlying question of what price to pay to secure an individual's
freedom and possibly save his life does not have a simple answer. While morality
requires us to try to save a human life and free a captive, there is surely a
limit to what we can do to secure these noble goals. Can we put other lives at
risk? Can we empower terrorist groups? Can we forsake justice? These are the difficult
ethical questions we must consider. We cannot simply ignore the potentially negative
consequences of this deal.

Undoubtedly, the hardest and most troubling aspect of the deal for Israel is the
fact that it rewards Hamas so handsomely for abducting and imprisoning Gilad Shalit
that it creates a strong incentive for future abductions (just as paying huge
ransoms to kidnappers does). In other words, it encourages Hamas and other groups
to try to seize more Israeli soldiers in the hope that they can secure the release
of more Palestinian prisoners and enhance their domestic support in the process.
Hence, the chances of another Israeli soldier and his or her family enduring the
experience of Gilad Shalit and his family are now greater than they were before
the deal was made. In fact, Gilad's abduction was itself a result, at least in
part, of previous deals that Israel has made with terrorist groups to secure the
release of its soldiers and citizens, even when they were just corpses. The first
of these deals was made back in 1985 when Israel freed 1,150 prisoners (Ahmad
Yassin, the future leader of Hamas was one of them) in exchange for three Israeli
soldiers held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
More recently, Israel struck a similarly lop-sided deal in 2004 with Hezbollah,
releasing 436 Palestinian and other Arab prisoners in return for the release of
Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli businessman, and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.
Were it not for these deals and others like them, perhaps Gilad Shalit would never
have been abducted in the first place.

Not only do these deals endanger Israelis by encouraging future abductions, they
also potentially endanger them by undermining Israeli deterrence. If would-be
terrorists believe that even if they are caught and convicted, they will one day
be released in exchange for kidnapped Israelis before serving their full sentence,
they may be more willing to carry out a terrorist attack. In short, the deterrent
effect of a possible long prison sentence is reduced.

Freeing convicted, and generally unrepentant, terrorists also puts Israeli lives
at risk (and is deeply offensive and painful to the families of their victims).
Palestinian prisoners that Israel has released in the past have gone on to commit
acts of terror against Israelis. There is little reason not to expect that at
least some among the 1,127 prisoners released by Israel will not try to inspire,
plan, or carry out new acts of violence against Israeli civilians. However confident
Israel's military and intelligence services are in their ability to track and
monitor the most dangerous terrorists being released, the risk they pose to Israelis
is undeniably greater when they are free than it is when they are in prison. If
one of the released Palestinian prisoners does take part in an act of terror in
the future, tragically their victims will be part of the price that Israel has
paid to secure Gilad Shalit's freedom.

More broadly, by making this deal with Hamas, and therefore enabling it to claim
success for its seizure and imprisonment of Gilad Shalit, Israel has strengthened
Hamas and its message of violent resistance to Israel and weakened the more moderate
Fatah party and its message of peaceful negotiation with Israel. This, too, could
well jeopardize Israeli lives if it allows Hamas to receive more money, more popular
support, and more recruits to its cause.

Thus, while saving the life of Gilad Shalit, the deal between Israel and Hamas
could potentially put many other Israeli lives at risk. From a "consequentialist"
ethical perspective, this must surely be considered wrong. On the other hand,
from a non-consequentialist, "deontological" perspective, the deal is
ethically sound on the grounds that we simply have a moral duty to free a captive
and save a human life if we can do so. There is, therefore, no definitive moral
answer here.

For Israelis, Gilad's freedom comes at a real price. Although they rejoice at
seeing a young man coming home and a son reunited with his family, they know from
bitter experience that there may be other Israeli sons and families who will one
day face the same ordeal. The next Gilad may among those celebrating Gilad Shalit's
return.

Israelis, however, are not the only ones for whom the Israel-Hamas deal is ethically
challenging. There is also something deeply worrisome for Palestinians in this
deal, or at least it should be worrisome. By demanding 1,027 Palestinians in exchange
for just one Israeli Jew, Hamas is undermining the value of Palestinian life.
In effect, this highly unequal ratio of 1:1027 says that a single Israeli Jew
is worth over a thousand Palestinians. While politically it makes sense for Hamas
to extract the maximum concession it can from Israel, ethically it is abhorrent
to insist upon such an unequal exchange. It suggests that Palestinians do not
value human life as much as Israelis do, and in doing so reinforces the already
prevalent belief among Israeli Jews that Palestinians life is cheap, much cheaper
than Jewish life. This, arguably more than anything else, is what is objectionable
about the deal between Israel and Hamas. It strikes at our fundamental belief
in human equality, a belief that is at the core of our moral thinking. To erode
this belief in any way, even if unintentionally and for the sake of freeing prisoners,
is the most unethical thing about this agreement.